
Screenwriting ABCs Storytelling
TOY STORY 3: Theme,Structure and Your Character’s Desire
by Jacob Krueger - Jacob Krueger Studio
Screenwriting Lesson, 3 pages
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TOY STORY 3:
Theme, Structure and Your Character’s Desire
By Jacob Krueger
If you’ve read the reviews, seen the movie, or talked to a friend, you know by now that just about everybody loves Toy Story 3. Audiences cheer. Critics gush. Grown adults laugh and weep like children. So what makes this movie work so well? And how can you use its secrets to improve your own screenwriting?
The Structural Engine of Your Character’s Desire
For all its emotional complexity, the engine of Toy Story 3′s structure is remarkably simple: a single want, shared by each and every one of its characters (just like it’s shared by each and every child): the desire to be loved and played with.
And the big problem which each and every character
(just like each and every child and adult) must face is that kids get older, move on, and stop playing with their toys. How does a good toy stay loyal in a world like this? And how does a boy stay loyal to the toys of his childhood?
These questions become the basis of the theme of Toy Story 3, and the glue that holds the emotional structure together.
Characters Who Shape Their Own Destinies
Like any good protagonists, these beloved toys aren’t just carried along by their fate. Instead, they take action to control their own destinies. Losing faith in Andy’s love, and believing they’ve been abandoned by the only owner they’ve ever had, they seek out a new life at a day care center, where their desperate desire to be loved and played with can be fulfilled by other children.
Of course, it can’t be that easy.
The Beauty of Unexpected Consequences
Great writers know that however beautiful or benign the character’s greatest wish may seem, they must explore both the best and the worst possible implications of fulfilling that wish. And the toys of Toy Story get a heck of a lot more than they bargained for.
Trapped in a playroom ruled by a psychotic strawberry scented bear, and filled with insane toddlers, the non-â€age-â€appropriate toys are literally tortured by the fulfillment of their own greatest desire, played with nearly to death, until the best thing they can hope for is to somehow escape to a life of confinement in Andy’s attic– the very fate that they were fleeing when they came to the daycare center in the first place.
When you can make your main characters run from the very thing they most want, you know you are succeeding as a writer.
Toy Story 3 pushes this irony even further by exploring yet another riff on the theme of loyalty: the journey of the one toy Andy still loves enough to take with him to college: Woody the Cowboy…
Push Your Characters To The Limit
Unlike the other toys, who turn their back on Andy when they think he doesn’t love them anymore, Woody is a character governed by his loyalty. But it’s easy to be loyal when you’re the most loved toy in the toybox. So Woody too must be tested.
The structure of Toy Story 3 is designed to test Woody to the greatest extent possible, by forcing him to choose between the one thing he truly wants, to stay with his beloved Andy, and saving his friends from certain death at the hands of the daycare toddlers.
Remaining loyal to his friends, Woody risks losing the one thing he truly wants, and proves himself worthy of Andy’s loyalty, and of ours.
In the process, he leads his friends to rediscover their own loyalty and their own faith, in Woody, in Andy, and in each other.
What Are The Foundations of Structure
As a writer, when you clearly establish your characters’ most deeply held desires early in the script, you arm yourself with the structural ammunition you need to build the kind of emotionally powerful story that moves your audience to laughter and tears. Structure can then grow organically, as you inspire your characters to seek their desires, and create obstacles that test and challenge who they are, and what they believe in.
Choose The Right Antagonist
Just like our protagonists, Lotso believes he has been abandoned by his owner. But rather than remaining loyal to his owner or his nature, he has become twisted by his feelings of betrayal, and lost his ability to love and be loved. Even when the good toys risk their own lives to save him, Lotso chooses betrayal over loyalty, and anger over love, abandoning the other toys to death by incineration at the garbage dump.
Mustache Twirling Villains Don’t Scare Us
Whether you’re writing a comedy like Toy Story 3, a drama like The Squid and The Whale or a thriller like Cape Fear, the most dramatic antagonists are usually frighteningly human. They too have needs and desires, and in their map of the universe, they see themselves as the hero or as the suffering victim.
By humanizing Lotso, the writers of Toy Story 3 deepen the emotional journey of their main characters, by exploring yet another variation on the theme of loyalty. Lotso is more than just an external threat to the toys, he’s a physical manifestation of the danger of giving up on loyalty, and the way the desperate desire for love can twist a character into an evil mockery everything he once represented.
In this way, Lotso becomes more than just an antagonist. He becomes a walking symbol of toys worst fears, about Andy, about the world and about themselves.
Let Your Characters Earn Their Happy Endings
Just as the choices we make in response to the challenges of our lives define us as people, so too do the choices the toys make define them as characters.
In overcoming Lotso and the doubt he represents, the toys come to terms with their own lack of faith, and recapture their loyalty to Andy and to each other.
In doing so, they earn the true fulfillment of their own greatest wish, when Andy bestows them on a little girl, and plays with them one last time before moving on to the next phase of his life.
And that, of course, is why we cry.
Because as silly and zany as Toy Story 3 might be, it draws its structure upon the real emotions, the real desires, and the real losses that we all share as we grow older, say goodbye to old phases of our lives and move on to the new ones.
The desire to be played with. The desire to be loved. The desire to relive those cherished memories one last time.
Every Journey Begins With A Want
Just as the journey of your character begins with a simple want, so too does your journey as a screenwriter. Take a moment to think about what you want today. And what steps are you ready to take to achieve it.
Your journey begins today.
To follow Jacob Krueger's blog or learn more about his Screenwriting Workshops, Online Classes, and International Retreats please visit WriteYourScreenplay.com.
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ABOUT JACOB KRUEGER
The founder of Jacob Krueger Studio, Jacob has worked with all kinds of writers, from Academy and Tony Award Winners, to young writers picking up the pen for the first time. His writing includes The Matthew Shepard Story, for which he won the Writers Guild of America Paul Selvin Award and was nominated for a Gemini Award for Best Screenplay.
"Jacob Krueger is a true collaborator, totally dedicated to the project, leaving his ego behind, but nevertheless demanding the highest standards because of his sharp dramatic sense and intuition.”
— Claude Michel Schonberg
Composer, LES MISERABLES, MISS SAIGON
Jacob teaches screenwriting in NYC, online and throughout the world for students of all levels.
More info: WriteYourScreenplay.com
